2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

Pretty much on point. Certainly, it was over-the-top schmaltz in any scene involving Kelly Preston. But as a die-hard Yankees fan, if the movie could make me root for Chapel to throw a perfect game in Yankee Stadium, I figure they must have done something right.

 

2. Kenta Maeda, Arrieta would have the best ERA in the NL, too. Maeda, of course, is nothing like Arrieta, aside from the whole really-successful-thus-far-in-2016 thing. His fastball lives at 90 mph. His slider is really two pitches: a cutter he uses against right-handers and a slower one with which he nibbles outside against left-handers. He throws a curveball and changeup frequently enough for hitters to think about them, and sometimes that’s all it takes. Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday, Maeda’s ERA dropped to a National League-leading 0.36. He is the first pitcher ever to give up just one run total in the first four starts of his career.

10 Degrees: Free from O's purgatory, Jake Arrieta flourishing with Cubs

 

I probably wouldn't have disliked it if I hadn't read the book.

For the most part, they stuck to the book for the baseball scenes, though the Davis Birch character had never been Chapel's teammate. They became friends at All-Star games and other events. The stuff with Chapel's connections to the younger players isn't in there, either. On the plus side, the movie has Vin Scully. That certainly adds to it.

The flashbacks and the relationship are where they diverted most from the book and pretty much every choice was bad. The love interest was far more interesting and fun in the book. She doesn't have a child. Most importantly, Billy Chapel is a hell of a lot more likeable in the book.

 

Bad News Bears, with Walter Mathau and Tatum O'Neal, is the greatest baseball movie nobody talks about.
Everyone who's ever played a day of Little League remembers kids who have no business playing, coaches who take the thing WAY too seriously, the one or two players who dominate, or the dynamic between overly eager sponsors/parents and coaches who have actual perspective. Bad News Bears depicts these themes perfectly.
You have to appreciate these universal elements. They're portrayed with the help brutally honest scenes (racial slurs, straight up child abuse, sexual innuendo) that are appropriate because they tell the story. Movies today either depict these topics in crude manor, or they totally avoid them at all. Bad News Bears takes the time to get it right. It has an edge AND a heart.

 

There will never be a baseball movie better than the Bad News Bears. Can't recreate that time and place. And it was just damn good.

Came out the same year as Rocky, one of the all-time great films during a time and place that is long gone.

 

I've always thought this stars Vin Scully.Not that you'd script him, but tying it in with Larsen's perfecto, plus all those lines that add life to a routine midweek game against the Rockies?

 

"And you know Steve you get the feeling that Billy Chapel isn't pitching against left handers, he isn't pitching against pinch hitters, he isn't pitching against the Yankees. He's pitching against time. He's pitching against the future, against age, and even when you think about his career, against ending. And tonight I think he might be able to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky and give us one more day of summer."

Freakin' awesome line.

 

Without question. Scully is the one thing that is better about the movie than the book. The book relies on Chapel's internal monologue to get those ideas across.

 

I mentioned this on the 40th anniversary of the Bad News Bears but it fits here too:

Years ago some talk radio guys here in Toronto were killing time putting together a list of the best movie baseball players at each position. They couldn't find a shortstop so they asked Pat Gillick, Jays' GM at the time and the next guest, and he never hesitated: "Tanner Boyle". Gave a pretty good scouting report on the kid...."fiery....gamer..."

 

40 years ago today, Monday.

 

I like this Rick Monday play much more.

 

Fuck Rick Monday.